Lausten wrote:Saw it. Pretty good. No weird pseudo-religious message. The science was plausible. The portrayal of the media reaction was excellent. The military characters actually had some depth to them. Not bad.

I'm looking forward to seeing Arrival. I believe it goes into the complexity of communication with aliens which interests me.

Lausten wrote:Saw it. Pretty good. No weird pseudo-religious message. The science was plausible. The portrayal of the media reaction was excellent. The military characters actually had some depth to them. Not bad.

Sadly, time travel woo was used to explain how Amy Adams could stop the Chinese from attacking. So, for me, the movie turned from plausible alien contact story to magic silliness. I still like magic silliness, but it was disappointing for me, since I was under the false impression that this was a hard sci-fi movie.

Lausten wrote:Saw it. Pretty good. No weird pseudo-religious message. The science was plausible. The portrayal of the media reaction was excellent. The military characters actually had some depth to them. Not bad.

Sadly, time travel woo was used to explain how Amy Adams could stop the Chinese from attacking. So, for me, the movie turned from plausible alien contact story to magic silliness. I still like magic silliness, but it was disappointing for me, since I was under the false impression that this was a hard sci-fi movie.

The connection though was that by learning the language, you learned their understanding of time, and if you learned their understanding of time, you understood that you can have "memories" of the future. Maybe you are not aware of the "hard" science that time may not be the linear thing that we now understand it to be.

Lausten wrote:Saw it. Pretty good. No weird pseudo-religious message. The science was plausible. The portrayal of the media reaction was excellent. The military characters actually had some depth to them. Not bad.

Sadly, time travel woo was used to explain how Amy Adams could stop the Chinese from attacking. So, for me, the movie turned from plausible alien contact story to magic silliness. I still like magic silliness, but it was disappointing for me, since I was under the false impression that this was a hard sci-fi movie.

The connection though was that by learning the language, you learned their understanding of time, and if you learned their understanding of time, you understood that you can have "memories" of the future. Maybe you are not aware of the "hard" science that time may not be the linear thing that we now understand it to be.

In the movie it appeared that they were THERE, not just remembering. "I know why my husband left me!"

Lausten wrote:Saw it. Pretty good. No weird pseudo-religious message. The science was plausible. The portrayal of the media reaction was excellent. The military characters actually had some depth to them. Not bad.

Sadly, time travel woo was used to explain how Amy Adams could stop the Chinese from attacking. So, for me, the movie turned from plausible alien contact story to magic silliness. I still like magic silliness, but it was disappointing for me, since I was under the false impression that this was a hard sci-fi movie.

The connection though was that by learning the language, you learned their understanding of time, and if you learned their understanding of time, you understood that you can have "memories" of the future. Maybe you are not aware of the "hard" science that time may not be the linear thing that we now understand it to be.

In the movie it appeared that they were THERE, not just remembering. "I know why my husband left me!"

Is a child's happiness priceless, and if so, when?

If one can be taught to believe absurdities, one can commit atrocities. --Voltaire

Lausten wrote:Saw it. Pretty good. No weird pseudo-religious message. The science was plausible. The portrayal of the media reaction was excellent. The military characters actually had some depth to them. Not bad.

Sadly, time travel woo was used to explain how Amy Adams could stop the Chinese from attacking. So, for me, the movie turned from plausible alien contact story to magic silliness. I still like magic silliness, but it was disappointing for me, since I was under the false impression that this was a hard sci-fi movie.

The connection though was that by learning the language, you learned their understanding of time, and if you learned their understanding of time, you understood that you can have "memories" of the future. Maybe you are not aware of the "hard" science that time may not be the linear thing that we now understand it to be.

In the movie it appeared that they were THERE, not just remembering. "I know why my husband left me!"

I think it was a change in perspective between the main character 's future self and current self brought about by her brain no longer distinguishing between past and future. How the brain could work that way in real life is beyond my expertise to speculate.

I think that is not what's happening: there is no time travel, no moving of her mind into herself at different times.
Instead, being able to understand the language makes her able to perceive the past and the future.
That was, she knew what would happen with her daughter and marriage, but decided to do it anyway.

ElectricMonk wrote:I think that is not what's happening: there is no time travel, no moving of her mind into herself at different times.
Instead, being able to understand the language makes her able to perceive the past and the future.
That was, she knew what would happen with her daughter and marriage, but decided to do it anyway.

That works as an explanation, but it's a movie, we're not supposed to completely understand how this would function in real life. The aliens appear, and their language is not linear, it doesn't assume time the way we do. The scenes are, by any standard of film making I've ever seen "flashbacks", but, like the occasional sci-fi movie does, they turn out to be "flash forwards". The additional twist of this movie is, she doesn't realize what they are until late into the movie, and we find out what they are at the same time she does.

I think it was consistent. We can see she is troubled by the thoughts, she keeps losing focus when they happen, but she never mentions this dead child to anyone. She lives in a big empty house, but you don't see pictures of her own daughter.

ElectricMonk wrote:I think that is not what's happening: there is no time travel, no moving of her mind into herself at different times.
Instead, being able to understand the language makes her able to perceive the past and the future.
That was, she knew what would happen with her daughter and marriage, but decided to do it anyway.

ElectricMonk wrote:I think that is not what's happening: there is no time travel, no moving of her mind into herself at different times.
Instead, being able to understand the language makes her able to perceive the past and the future.
That was, she knew what would happen with her daughter and marriage, but decided to do it anyway.

How are the two different?

determinism.
nothing can change through her visions of different times, because from the POV of the aliens they happen simultaneously - she just gains prior knowledge of events.
but the movie rests on the idea that she won't act differently (like not have a child) even with perfect foreknowledge, preserving determinism.

ElectricMonk wrote:I think that is not what's happening: there is no time travel, no moving of her mind into herself at different times.
Instead, being able to understand the language makes her able to perceive the past and the future.
That was, she knew what would happen with her daughter and marriage, but decided to do it anyway.

How are the two different?

determinism.
nothing can change through her visions of different times, because from the POV of the aliens they happen simultaneously - she just gains prior knowledge of events.
but the movie rests on the idea that she won't act differently (like not have a child) even with perfect foreknowledge, preserving determinism.

So, why did she ask at one point, if you knew what was going to happen in your life, would you still do the same things? That's a classic philosophical question, and she answers it by hugging her future husband, knowing they will divorce. She would rather have the child that dies of cancer than no child at all. She can affect the future because she tells the Chinese general to meet her in the future and tell her something only he would know, so she can save the world in the present. Either, on some timeline, she didn't know she did that until the general tells her she did it, or her memory is not perfect, so in the future she can forget things she did just like we forget things from the past, or alter our past memories to fit our present personalities.

Monster wrote: Sadly, time travel woo was used to explain how Amy Adams could stop the Chinese from attacking. So, for me, the movie turned from plausible alien contact story to magic silliness. I still like magic silliness, but it was disappointing for me, since I was under the false impression that this was a hard sci-fi movie.

I watched it last night. It started so well and then went into time travel silliness.